‘Community’ Creator Dan Harmon Is Replaced as Show Runner

For a brief moment, things seemed to be looking up at “Community,” the intensely loved if not widely watched NBC comedy about misfit students at a small college: it had been narrowly renewed for a fourth season (albeit for only 13 episodes) and its third-season finale on Thursday night concluded with an on-screen display of an optimistic Twitter hashtag: #sixseasonsandamovie.

But if “Community” should reach those far-flung milestones, it will have to do so with out its creator, Dan Harmon, who on Friday night was let go as the show runner of the series. Mr. Harmon, a comedy writer whose credits include “The Sarah Silverman Program” and the animated feature “Monster House,” will be replaced by David Guarascio and Moses Port, who have been producers on TV comedies like “Happy Endings” and “Just Shoot Me.”

Representatives for NBC and for Sony Pictures Television, the studio that produces “Community,” did not immediately comment. But in a post on his personal blog, Mr. Harmon made clear that the change was not voluntary and offered few of the inspirational notes for which “Community” is known.

“Why’d Sony want me gone?” Mr. Harmon wrote. “I can’t answer that because I’ve been in as much contact with them as you have. They literally haven’t called me since the season four pickup, so their reasons for replacing me are clearly none of my business. ‘Community’ is their property, I only own ten percent of it, and I kind of don’t want to hear what their complaints are because I’m sure it would hurt my feelings even more now that I’d be listening for free.”

Mr. Harmon said that though NBC and its entertainment president, Robert Greenblatt, have suggested that Mr. Harmon might continue to consult on “Community,” such an arrangement seemed unworkable to him.

“If I actually chose to go to the office,” Mr. Harmon wrote, “I wouldn’t have any power there. Nobody would have to do anything I said, ever.” He added: “I’m not saying you can’t make a good version of ‘Community’ without me, but I am definitely saying that you can’t make my version of it unless I have the option of saying ‘it has to be like this or I quit’ roughly 8 times a day.”

Mr. Harmon concluded his post by reflecting on his mother, who told him as a child that he didn’t need friends who beat him up, and who later bought him a Commodore 64 computer and a modem.

“My Commodore 64 is mobile now,” Mr. Harmon wrote, “like yours, and the modems are invisible, and the internet is the air all around us. And the good friends, the real friends, are finding each other, and connecting with each other, and my Mom is turning out to be more right than ever.”